


297. twins

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [345]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 05:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11155509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: In the womb, an egg splits in two.This changes things.





	297. twins

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are! The very last one. Thank you to everyone who read even a fraction of the SDDP -- thank you for your kudos, comments, bookmarks. Thanks especially to Kat and YaYa for being incredible beacons of support. I treasure you.
> 
> So, yeah. Enjoy.

In the womb, an egg splits in two.

This changes things.

One child was dreaming and now two children are dreaming – a dream of atoms moving from place to place, weaving what used to be one child into two separate combinations of muscle and bone. They are growing, slowly, silently. They were dreaming the same dream, but their dreams are moving apart. This will last the rest of their lives; when one dreams about the sea, the other will dream about the sky. Right now they don’t know either of these things and so they just dream themselves to life. Here the beginning of a hand. Here the small shifting that could become a foot. Here the space between them, growing. It will never shrink again.

Outside of them, Amelia is listening. She is hearing the Duncans spin a dream of what her child could be, and she is putting a hand over her stomach, and she is thinking that this is the wrong story.

(Of course it is the wrong story: she is only considering one child.)

The idea of _running_ passes through Amelia’s bones, into her blood, into what used to be one child. The idea splits: running from, running to. The space between them keeps growing. Remember: it will never shrink again, remember: they will never be this close again, remember: the moment they were close was before the beginning of this story. This story will go on for a very long time, and it will never again have a moment where they are as close to each other as they could have been.

They are going to be so many things – a mother, a sister, an enemy. They are going to be terrified. They are going to be brave. They dream of nothing except what they could be. In Amelia’s stomach they are dreaming themselves to life, and this goes on and on and on.

They grow. They grow: two hearts, ten fingers, ten toes. They grow: the same, mostly, except for the ways they are different. They mirror each other but this is not the same as being close. They complete each other but this is not the same as being close. Eyelashes grow, swaying over closed eyes like the smallest of undersea plants. Hands open and shut. Feet kick.

Outside of them, Ethan and Susan Duncan are making plans. They know how this story will go; they have always known, because they engineered this story precisely. A surrogate mother who can be persuaded to keep quiet. A little girl born with a womb tweaked just right. A nursery. A name: Rachel.

The wrong story. The right name, but the wrong story. They had only planned for one child. They had planned for the wrong child.

The twins grow anyways, despite all of this. They are going to be born into the wrong story; it will hurt. They are going to do the wrong thing, over and over, and that will also hurt. There is going to be so much hurt. Kinder to watch them like this: small naked pink little things, their backs to one another, growing together and growing completely alone. One of them opens her eyes and blinks. She can see nothing but open pink space, not quite sea and not quite sky.

Their dreams are strange slow things, rolling over and over. Later they are going to have nightmares. Nice dreams – parties, hugs, landscapes that go on forever – but also so many nightmares. They will wake up in the dark and they will reach for something they lost a long time ago. For a very long time, they won’t know what they are reaching for. And then they will know exactly what they’ve lost.

Outside of them, Kendall Malone is smoking a cigarette. She is beginning the slow slide towards regret. Years from now the pieces of the story will come together, Ethan and Kendall, and they will find a new story. It will be the right story, but they will still only consider one child.

Outside of them, Maggie Chen and Tomas are moving on their own small orbits through this story. Years from now they will also come together, and they too will only consider one child.

It’s the wrong story. Oh, maybe it’s the right story, but surely it must be the wrong one. Why else would it hurt this much?

Two sisters echo each other in the womb. _Two sisters_ : two separate words, two separate concepts. They are splitting further apart as this story goes on. They are not as close as they were at the beginning; every heartbeat takes them further and further away from one another. They grow, and this brings them towards the world – and when they go towards the world, one of them will slide out first. The other one will be left behind. They may not even get the chance to see one another, and if they did, they wouldn’t know.

Imagine it: a baby in a car, and also a baby in a car. A baby driving towards the inevitability of Kendall Malone. A baby driving towards the inevitability of Maggie Chen. Two separate stories. It would be easy, to think of them as two separate stories.

But for now that’s impossible to think. Look: one of them is sucking her thumb. Look: they are shifting in the womb as Amelia runs, hand pressed again to her stomach. Amelia knows them, now. Amelia is the very first one to know them. This will hurt her. There is going to be so _much_ hurt.

It will hurt when they are born. They will come out into the world screaming, and Amelia will be screaming, and the world will be so cold and unforgiving. But for now the world is nothing more than a pink expanse, something to dream about, something to dream to.

One sister breathes in. One sister breathes out. The story waits for them to be born, so it can start.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading.


End file.
